The Economy of Love vs. The Economy of Fear

It's Sunday morning in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The mercury is hovering somewhere around 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun is shining brilliantly. As I was doing my meditation, I was struck by the underlying fear that seems to permeate everything in the media these days. This is not a new condition in the world, but because of our technology we are connected 24/7 to the fear mongers and the harbingers of doom. There are many brave voices also that speak about hope and a new era approaching. But so often they are the softer voices with much less media coverage. Even Oprah, whom I admire greatly, highlights fear on her shows at times.

The biggest fear that seems to consume most of the media and most of the population, is the fear around the financial situation, because the great economies (translate - the rich countries) of the world seem to be going broke. Why they are going broke is based on fear, corruption, and greed. What if there really is a simple answer to how we can transform the economic crisis? What if all we have to do is to stop being afraid? What if the answer is within each and every one of us, and not dependent on any looming institution?

Greed and corruption can only exist where fear is present. When people - not corporations, but people, for every institution on Earth is run by people - are afraid they will lose what they have, they tend to close their fists around what they do have and then invest most of their time and energy on keeping what they have and finding ways to get more.

The fear that we will die if we don't have enough is omnipresent as long as fear is the most prevalent emotion. But there are people who live quite simply and comfortably in the midst of this fear-storm. Who are they? Are they the very rich? Though that would seem to be the case, it isn't necessarily so for all the wealthy, because many of the wealthiest are the very people who created the corruption and the destruction of the economy. And they did it, and do it, because they fear losing what they have - money and power. So, their fear has led to greed and corruption. But what about the rest of the human population? Are we just poor simple pawns in the hands of the multi-national coporations, which are led by powerful greedy people? I don't think so.

I think we are all powerful beings who have individual power and collective power that can, and I truly believe will, transform this greedy culture into a culture of abundance for all. But we won't do it by trying to help restore the "halcyon days of the 80s and 90s," because that was not a true abundant culture. That was a greed and corruption based culture, where the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. One sixth of the world's population, that is one billion people, live on less that $1 a day, and another billion live on less than $2 a day.

The transformation will come, and is coming, as one by one we stop listening to the fear mongers and become the harbingers of a new way. A way based on love and abundance for all. And to do this we must stop feeling like we are helpless victims of the powers of greed and corruption, and tune into the magnificent truth of the universe. And that truth is that Love is the power that overcomes fear, and thus greed and corruption, and that as each of us, one person and one moment at a time, steps out of fear and slips into the great stream of Love that powers the entire universe, we are free to be abundant. We are all free to live in the flow of love and joy and true prosperity. It is a choice. Yes, a hard choice to make when fear is the loudest voice in the crowd, and the illusion is that you will lose everything.

And yes, it is always possible that you may lose everything, but if you own your own soul, if you stop thinking that you have no power over the evil beast and go instead on the quest for your own magnificent hero within your soul, you will not be the victim of the beast any longer. You will be the hero of your life and have all that you need.
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And here's a little thought. What if you didn't give a damn if you were in debt? What if that fear didn't consume so much of your energy?
More on that next time.
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In the meantime, remember that there is always someone in the world who has less than you have. Reach out and give one of those people a hand and feel the love that surges between you both. That is where the power is - in the surges of love, not the cringes of fear.

11:11

As I tuned in this morning and connected energetically with all the people around the planet who are co-visioning a new world - a world based on love and caring for one another - I was struck by the enormous power we have in the simplicity of our intentions. I began to think about what I hold onto in my life that is contrary to a world based on love and caring. And some of those things, most of them, are masked in what I have in the past considered love and caring. I realized that the way I love my son, which is profoundly, is hindered by old patterns that we created when he, who is now 45, was 4 years old. It was that year that I split up with his father. And I felt so guilty for taking his father away from him that patterns of resentment and guilt were set up, not only in my consciousness, but also in his. And from that moment on, as much as we loved each other, these old patterns continued to inform all of our communication, no matter how much we have tried to overcome them. Both my son and I are lifelong meditators and lightworkers, and yet, we continue to hold onto the blame, resentment, and guilt because these patterns are so old that we, or at least I, couldn't see them clearly. It was if I were seeing them through "a glass darkly," or like shadows, buried in a kind of sentimentality that pretends to be true emotion. So, for my part today, on 11:11 when a million or more people around the world are linking our hearts and minds and spirits to create, through our intentions, a healthy new world, I make it my intention to let go of all resentment, blame and guilt I have in my personal relationships and replace those old patterns with pure love. Love that is not conditional. Love that is not sentimental. Love that has no expectations. No agenda. Just love.

In the Eye of the Storm - My Dad and the Great Depression

I began thinking this morning about my father, Ernie Coulson.  He was quite a man, as they would have said about him back in his day.  Ernie would be 110 years old this year.  He was born on Christmas Day 1899.  The very end of the century before last.  Kind of a trippy thought.  He said things to me like, Never invest in the stock market. - To have a vision for the future you must know history. -   Nothing is constant but change. - Give ‘em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves. We had very few long conversations, my daddy and I, but his pithy remarks and his life story molded me into the person I am today.

 His friends always said, “Yep, Ernie Coulson told us it would work out this way twenty years ago.”  A visionary in a grey flannel suit.  A man who was too young (just barely) for WWI and too old for WWII.  A man who drove a Model T Ford from Missouri to California on dirt roads.  He told me about a sign he saw in Texas that said, “Pick your rut you’ll be in it for the next fifty miles.”  My daddy hated ruts.  He loved being carefree. 

He had his degree in business, but that didn’t keep him tied down.  In the 1920s and into the ‘30s he did the accounting for many of the brothels on Cannery Row in Monterey, California.  It was a very lucrative business.  The madams loved him, and I’m sure he loved them too in his way, a little detached, but appreciative.  I actually worked for one of those madams in the 1960s, but she no longer had a brothel.  She owned the Amador Hotel, a restaurant and cabaret, in an old mining town in Northern California, where I sang and danced on weekends. Her name was Grace Chaney, and she was married to Lon Chaney Sr.’s brother George.  When my father walked in opening night, her face lit up.  “Ernie Coulson, you old dog,” she said, as she wrapped her arms around his neck.  She almost kissed him, but pulled back demurely when she noticed my very proper mother standing behind my father glaring at her. 

               But let me go back to that time when my father was fancy free.  The Great Depression had descended upon the country.  Long lines of people trying to find work, trying to find food, losing their homes.  But my daddy wasn’t in any of those lines.  He didn’t come from great wealth, and believe me, very few of the rich suffered during the Great Depression.  He was just a guy from humble beginnings, on his own, living in Northern California and having a hellava good time.  He drove a dark green Auburn roadster convertible.  He lived in the Senator Hotel, Sacramento’s luxury hotel, just across the street from the State Capitol.  He owned four hundred suits (I know, hard to believe) and had a personal valet.  He hung out with his cronies -- politicians, businessmen, and a famous boxer, Max Bear -- in a restaurant called Bedell’s, down the block from his hotel.  He was a man about town.  By this time he had let most of his Cannery Row clients go, and was teaching at the Sacramento Business College.  He walked with a swagger, and smoked a pipe.  He wore his fedora cocked jauntily to the left.  Women were crazy for him.  But my mother snagged him. 

My daddy never suffered from the Great Depression.  He knew instinctively how to live in the eye of the storm.  I think it was his philosophy taken from Socrates, There is nothing constant but change, and his vision -- his ability to see what was coming next.  He didn’t let himself get stuck in the common knowledge that all was lost.  He surfed the Great Depression.  He lived with a sense of joie de vivre and non-attachment.  He didn’t own much, just his suits and his car.  If he lost those he knew he would still be himself.  He lived in the moment.  He didn’t fear the future, because he was immersed in the present.  But even as he was focused in the present, he also had this vision of a prosperous America in the future.  He saw the 1950s in the 1930s.  His friends counted on him for this vision.   

               Because I am the daughter of Ernie Coulson, visionary, I have been blessed with this ability to relax in the present, without attachment to possessions, and see the future.  Again, we are in a financial crisis.  But as Ernie Coulson’s daughter, I know that there is nothing constant but change.  That there is a bright and prosperous future coming soon.  And that if I stay in the present moment, hang out with my friends, have a good time, and don’t invest in the stock market, all will be well.